Really Good Quidditch Players
by darris108
Summary: "I like really good Quidditch players," Hermione corrected her, still smiling.  - HPB  What Ron got up to during Slughorn's Christmas party. Rated for language and mild sexual references.


_A/N: Something a little different – a one-shot outtake from HPB from Ron's PoV. Written for the Pick-a-Prompt fest at Ron-x-Hermione at deviantArt. Quite different in style to anything I've done before; rated for language and very mild sexual references. Feedback much appreciated!_

A large, red Quaffle came hurtling towards Ron out of the darkness. He flew out to meet it, blocking its progress with his elbow. It flew off to his left, and he veered around in a circle in the opposite direction. He saw the Quaffle accelerate towards the centre goal hoop, and he put on a burst of speed, tipping the ball over the top of the hoop with his fingertips at the last second.

Ron slowed to a stop, watching the Quaffle as it, too, came to a rest in mid-air. He hovered staring at it for a few seconds, before it suddenly darted straight at his head. Ducking quickly, he looked to his right to see where it had gone. It was shooting straight at his right goal hoop. He accelerated, reaching out his hand to bock it, but he was too slow, and the Quaffle flew straight through the hoop.

"SHIT!" he yelled in frustration. He punched the metal hoop next to him hard, not feeling the pain that shot through his entire arm in protest, and glared at the Quaffle, which had once again come to a rest on the other side of the three goal hoops, and then pulled out his wand and waved it irritably. He caught the red ball as it came zooming towards him. Tucking it under his arm, he turned his broom around with his free hand and flew to the ground. He threw his broom aside the moment he had dismounted, and paced over to the open crate in the middle of the pitch.

After shoving the Quaffle unceremoniously into its place in the middle of the crate and shutting it forcefully, Ron dragged it along behind him, went to pick up his broom, and then strode off the pitch into the changing rooms, muttering curses and swear words under his breath. As he did so, he heard an echo in his head of a girl's voice, falsely sweet and cruelly vindictive: _"I like _really good _Quidditch players."_

He kicked the door into the boy's rooms open, strode over to where his normal clothes lay in a messy heap, and pulled his Quidditch robes over his head, nearly tearing them as he did so. Throwing them as hard as he could onto the bench, he then stormed into the shower room, turning on a tap and placing himself under the scalding water and standing there, scowling at the tiled wall in front of him.

He honestly didn't know who he was angrier at. He wanted to storm straight up to the Gryffindor common room, straight up to Lavender fucking Brown, and ditch the whore in front of the whole house. Stupid bitch, all she had done since leaping at him after the match against Slytherin was snog him some more (among other things) and completely screw up his relationship with one of the two best friends he had ever had.

But he also wanted to find that bastard McLaggen and hex him until he couldn't walk, much less play Quidditch, for daring to even think about getting anywhere near Hermione. It was Krum all over again, and Ron wanted to break McLaggen's arm with his bare hands, just as he had snapped the arm of the model of Krum he had bought at the Quidditch World Cup two years ago.

Mostly, though, Ron wanted to go and shout at Hermione, shout at her until he was red in the face and she was yelling back at him, standing ten feet away from each other and bellowing until they were both hoarse. As the scene played out in his mind, however, Ron saw something new; Hermione suddenly stopped shouting and ran up to him. He thought she was going to hit him, but instead she grabbed his neck, pulled his mouth down to hers, and kissed him passionately.

Ron mentally shook himself, and the scene in his mind dissolved, replaced by the steamy changing room, clouds of gas hovering all around him so that he could barely see anything apart from his own skin, which was gradually turning red as the boiling water continued to rush over him. He turned off the tap and walked slowly back into the changing rooms, grabbing a towel and drying himself absently. His mind was quite elsewhere.

Being a teenage boy, Ron was quite used to his mind presenting him with images of him snogging various different girls in a range of states of clothing (usually not very much). He had never pictured such a scene with Hermione before, though. He burned inside at the thought of what his classmates and housemates would say if they knew what he had just been imagining.

Angry with himself now, as well as Lavender, McLaggen and Hermione, Ron pulled his clothes back on and slung his Quidditch robes and broom over his shoulder. He stepped out of the changing rooms into the grounds. It was very cold; he had not noticed while he had been flying. He crossed the lawn, looking up at the castle as he went, at the many lit windows and the moving figures behind some of them. He scanned the windows on the third floor, wondering which one was the window of Slughorn's office, where Hermione would be with McLaggen at that stupid party.

As his anger swelled once more, Ron tore his gaze away from the castle and stared at the ground in front of him as though trying to burn a hole in it with his gaze, trying not to imagine what exactly McLaggen might be trying to do to Hermione right now. It was easy to ignore it, so much easier to just feel angry at the pair of them, and to rage internally at Hermione for being so petty and vindictive, to play with his insecurities and to go out with McLaggen just to get back at him.

Ron's anger continued through the front doors and up the marble staircase and the many more staircases and secret passages right up to the portrait of the Fat Lady, where he gave the password and crawled through the portrait hole. The moment he was inside, he was immediately rushed by Lavender, who through her arms around him and kissed him, before complaining that she wasn't going to see him for three weeks over Christmas and making him promise to write to her.

Before he knew it had happened, she had dragged him out of the common room to find some deserted classroom, so as to have more 'privacy'. He let her pull him along and into a side room, and kiss him until they were both breathless. He let her run her hands over his chest and arms, and then progressively lower. It numbed his feelings slightly, and it was just so easy to go along with it.

What wasn't easy was to keep his mind from imagining that it was Hermione he was kissing, not Lavender; that it was Hermione who was pressing her body into his hungrily and moving her mouth so passionately against his. It was still harder, when he awoke the following day, to get up out of bed and act for all the world as if everything was normal.

_A/N: Please do review, this is somewhat unexplored territory for me!_


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